Category Archives: when it all goes wrong

One of the questions I get asked time and time is one of the simplest: why doesn’t the Law of Attraction work for me?

After all, The Secret made it sound so easy.

There are a few reasons why things might not be working out for you.

First of all, just to recap a little bit from one of my previous post, are you coming from your head or your heart?

Desires from the ego may lead to failure….

If you’re coming from your head, thinking of the things that you might like to have in your life, then I’m wondering if perhaps you’re being influenced by the world around you…. By what we are conditioned to want through adverts on TV and other ephemeral rubbish.

To what extent, in other words, are your desires guided by the cultural norm?

However, in my opinion, there’s no reason you shouldn’t try and manifest material goods and wealth. If you’re serious about what you want, you might even be successful. In fact you probably will.

The problem is when you’re coming from your head in this way – which means coming from your ego, or coming from a place where you’re basically concerned with status or appearance or something materialistic in nature – you often don’t have the energy to sustain the process of manifesting your desires.

Happiness or money – which would you prefer to manifest?

For one thing, the desires of the mind, the desires of the ego, can be distracted by the trivialities of everyday life that call upon us.
Imagine, then, how this compares with your soul purpose: if you’re trying to manifest something which is essentially about the nature of “who you are” and “what your purpose on the planet is”, I guess you can put a lot more energy into creating your reality.

That’s because heart-driven objectives will provide you with more vital energy to sustain the process between coming up with the idea and manifesting in your life.

To put it simply: you just don’t want it enough. Oh dear.

In addition, of course, heartfelt desires are not superficial, unlike the desires that we come up with from our minds in response to fads and fashions or what’s seen as desirable in society at the moment.

On the other hand there is a danger in listening to experts on the law of attraction who become too puritanical and claim that there’s no point trying to manifest anything unless your objective is in line with your soul purpose.

That’s just a viewpoint which goes to the opposite extreme and is no more helpful. Fact is: we are given the ability to manifest material goods, and many people use it successfully.

So If You Keep Your Energy Focused, Will Something Manifest More Quickly?

You are connected to the Universe, and it will always help you get what you want…..

You’d certainly think so, wouldn’t you, from reading so much of the Law of Attraction material which has been published recently?

I mean, almost every author speaks of the need to constantly focus on what you want, to provide your vision with emotional energy all the time.

Indeed some people will say that you need to become almost “obsessed” with your objectives.

However, there is another point of view. It’s this: what about the idea that constantly obsessing about what you want will actually stop things manifesting for you?

Sidebar: at this point you may feel some frustration, because what I’ve written above is probably a minor representation of so much material on the Law of Attraction. One author says one thing, another says the opposite. Both say that their views are correct. Both swear their views are correct. Indeed, both say that you can’t possibly manifest anything if you follow any advice but theirs. And clearly that’s ridiculous. So where does the truth lie? The simplest explanation of this is that what you believe determines how successful you are with manifestation. So if you believe something is essential to the process of creating it, then it becomes so for you. Perhaps that’s why authors who’ve had success with their own system of manifestation will so clearly and fervently affirm that theirs is the only way.

I agree that it’s certainly possible that obsessing may get in the way of your desires manifesting.

But there are other explanations too; the simplest of them is this – there really might be different ways in which you can achieve success at manifestation.

It’s All So Confusing – Make Your Own Mind Up

Michael Mackintosh says that for him success comes when he does the opposite of trying to think about what he wants and believes he has. As he says:

“Ironically, every time amazing things happen in my life it is after I’ve done the following:

1 Got clear my heart’s true desires.
2 Surrendered to the divine and felt so full inside myself that I must don’t need anything. He calls this receiving divine power and freedom.
3 Let go of any desire to have the things I want completely.”

In other words he is saying that the magic happens when he truly no longer wants the thing he was thinking about, because the universe then somehow brings it about for him. He calls it bizarre.

And indeed at first reading it does sound pretty strange. He says however, that on countless occasions, within one second up to 24-hours after letting go, amazing things have shown up for him.

To quote him again: “This is a strange surprise because I have just given up wanting it completely and have no interest in it.”

You’ll see that the key to this, the key to this method of achieving your goals, I mean, is letting go, surrendering, and feeling full before the desire has been attained.

Michael illustrates this more clearly by saying it’s one thing to imagine you have a nice car and feel good because you are daydreaming about it; and quite another to feel quite contented with your life now regardless of any cars or other circumstances.

In other words, his suggestion is that you need to just be content with the way things are now. It’s a form of surrender, of letting go, perhaps even of being open to the Highest Good for all concerned.

Michael calls this a secret, and if it’s true, then it probably is a greater secret than any so-called secret in The Secret!

Oh, by the way, he says that this won’t work if your motivation is simply to get stuff. In other words, there has to be some spiritual aspect to your motivation.

To summarize again: you need to be willing to genuinely surrender and let go of your desire. Replace it with the knowledge that the universe can supply all your needs, all the time, and is ready to do so. (Indeed, it aready has. All you have to do is ask for them.) And then open to whatever manifestation represents the highest good for all concerned.

But how do you let go?

Well, of course we are materialistic animals, and completely surrendering and releasing your desire for something is not so easy.
The question is, as Michael so rightly says, how can you want something with all your heart and yet not care whether or not you get it?

This is probably what people mean when they talk about releasing your desires.

One technique which I have seen repeated in several places is to imagine the scene of your desired manifestation inside a bubble and then to release it back into the universe, offering it up to God, and allowing yourself to relinquish the dream if it isn’t for the highest good of all concerned. (It’s probably good idea to ask for something which IS for the highest good of all concerned.)

I won’t discuss everything Michael says about this process here, I think it’s worth getting the book if you’re interested in learning more about this.

But it’s a highly evolved spiritual position, I think, where you can accept that the universe is ready to give you everything that you need, if you can completely surrender your desires.

It’s summed up in an expression that you may well have heard in many different situations: all you need is within you now. It’s a profound statement which is true on many levels.

Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, one of the big problems people experience when trying to manifest with the Law of Attraction is – wait for it – it doesn’t seem to work!

Although there are many reasons for people’s failure to manifest successfully, if you happen to be trying to use the Law of Attraction and it’s not working you can be quite dispirited.

You see, there’s a widespread viewpoint that all you have to do is form an image of what you want, picture it with great certainty, and it’ll mysteriously appear in your life.

But that’s too simple a viewpoint!

I’ve repeatedly said that the universe isn’t fickle, by which I mean is basically programmed to give you what you want, but there are some things you have to do to make this happen.

We know about the obvious ones, like ensuring you have complete belief in the process, not setting targets you don’t believe you can achieve, and taking action of some kind to move towards your objective – but are there more subtle factors at work which might prevent the law of attraction from working?

It’s a fair question and one that deserves serious consideration.

Manifestation Misery

A lot of the teaching around the law of attraction seems to focus on three simple steps: Ask – Believe – Receive.

In other words, you simply ask for what you want by presenting your request to the universe; you then try and believe that you already have it – something that is called acting “as if” – using the joy and energy you feel about the prospect of having your goals achieved to “drive” the process; and finally you wait until what you want is delivered to you by the universe.

It sounds great – essentially you just sit back and dream. And of all the places where these ideas have been put forward, none has exceeded The Secret for offering a simple representation of the process – and emphasis of how easy it is.

Rhonda Byrne – The Story of Manifesting The Secret

Manifestation Misery!

But that clearly isn’t true, because many of the people who are disappointed with the results they get other ones who have read The Secret (read a critique here.)

So what’s going on ? Why isn’t manifestation working for people?

We know that different people will have different outcomes from using Law of Attraction principles the way it’s traditionally been taught.

One possibility is that you have rather inconsistent success – you find some good things coming into your life – and that’s fantastic – but you’re not really quite sure how that happened.

Not everyone using The Secret will get results like these two magnificent manifestors – Branson and Robbins!

Richard BransonTony Robbins – Master of Manifestation

And in fact if the Law of Attraction is sometimes working for you and sometimes it isn’t, you’re almost certainly going to be confused: why is it sometimes effective, and why is it sometimes not?

Is it your fault, or is it the Law of Attraction which is unreliable?

The truth is, if you don’t know what’s responsible for your success you’re likely to be very confused indeed.

And of course another possibility is that it simply didn’t work for you all – no matter how hard you tried, the Law of Attraction doesn’t come up with the goods, which can be the most disheartening of all outcomes because it causes you to lose faith in yourself and in the Law of Attraction, which you may well have been relying on to completely transform your life.

I’m not sure if the third possibility is even worse: where you’ve managed to manifest things that you want, but you’ve experienced some negative side effects.

You got what you want, but you’ve also got a whole gamut of unforeseen problems, and your life’s ended up worse than it was before you started trying to manifest anything!

Indeed, it’s not uncommon for people to manifest what they think they want, then discover that their life is actually no better than it was before…or perhaps it’s even worse because now they have unexpected negative side-effects to deal with.

I remember one person who manifested a beautiful loving relationship, or so he thought, and only years later discovered that his “ideal partner” had been lying and cheating him for years, and had reduced him and his business to bankruptcy by stealing the profits.

Not good, but sadly not uncommon either.

And another possibility is that people can’t focus on the energetic requirements for successful manifestation.

Either they lose interest in what they’re trying to achieve, or they’re distracted by something else, or they simply can’t sustain a positive frame of mind for long enough to maintain the energy that is needed to drive the process of manifestation.

Quieting their mind so that they can enjoy meditation. The same must be true of people’s ability to quite their mind so that they can visualize and think about the particular thing they’re trying to manifest in their lives.

So what’s going on?

Sidebar: Before we look at that, I’d like to invite you to consider Byron Katie’s work on improving your life. Just check it out here.

Well, the fact of the matter is that it isn’t that traditional teaching about the Law of Attraction is wrong. It’s just not actually complete.

You see, there are several more aspects to the Law of Attraction which can make your attempts to use it much more successful.

And we will start with one of them which Michael Mackintosh has described as “the new method” of using the Law of Attraction.
He describes what he calls four “missing secrets” which are traditionally not taught in work about the Law of attraction.

#1 The Law of Ascension
#2 Not All Desires Are The Same
#3 It’s The Opposite of What You expect
#4 The “Obvious” Secret